Book Description
As immortality is the stability of life, and eternity the stability of being, so memory is the stability of knowledge. The faculty of memory depends on a fully functioning brain. Remembrance and recollection are the attributes and handmaidens of that memory. An idea recurring spontaneously is remembrance; when searched and retrieved by effortful thinking, recollection. While memory is physical and evanescent, for it depends upon the condition of the brain, reminiscence is the memory of the soul. Memory is the only faculty in man directly opposed to prognostication, or looking into futurity. Memory is one thing, and mind (i.e., thoughts) is another; the one is a recording machine, a register which very easily gets out of order; the other, thoughts, which are eternal and imperishable. Memory is an important power, but the mind itself is not memory, it is restless and wandering in its nature, and must be controlled. Phantasy is uncontrolled remembrance of past thoughts and images. Phantasy is the most unreliable thing in us. Phantasy stifles enthusiasm. Phantasy is an impediment to our spiritual perceptions. When the mind is inspired by the spirit above, if phantasy intervenes, the enthusiastic energy ceases; for enthusiasm and ecstasy are contrary to each other. Conviction breeds enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity. The enthusiastic passion is a kind of fury, partaking something of divine inspiration. But it is not called forth from within, it is an insufflation from some stronger power from without, thus bringing about a disturbance of the rational mind. What we have within, that only can we see without and thus, by summoning the forgotten knowledge from Lethe, we may re-enter into the heavenly vault.
